Profile PageLike many social sites, the new Flickr profile page—aka, your "Photostream"—takes a page from Facebook by letting you choose a "cover photo" as a banner atop your page. As in Facebook, you can choose from recent photos in your stream or upload a new image for your cover photo. If you don't add your own cover photo, Flickr automatically adds an attractive on, in my case usually of some sort of vegetation.

Some Pro users may be miffed that they can no longer choose the presentation of their images on their profile page; they used to be able to switch between smaller thumbnails and a large, one-shot-at-a time view. The page gets the same justified, "waterfall" view that the home page gets. This view is nice in that it keeps the photo's aspect ratio accurate, where preset thumbnails don't. Flickr was never intended as a portfolio site with lots of individual control over webpage design: For that, look to SmugMug ($40 a year, 3 stars).

Uploading Uploading has gotten much better with Flickr's new HTML5-based Uploadr. I like it even better than some installed photo uploading software. You can drag and drop photo files onto it, and while the upload is happening, you can rotate the photos, add tags, titles, descriptions, people tags, and even choose or create a photo set. You can even magnify any un-uploaded photo for a larger view. Of course, you don't have to use the Web-based Flickr Uploadr, since just about every photo-editing app, from iPhoto to Instagram to Lightroom, can directly upload to the service.

Photo Sets, Collections, Galleries Flickr's photo organization offerings may at first seem like overkill: You have photo sets, galleries, and collections, not to mention groups. Photo sets are simply a number of photos you group together, whether from a vacation, event, or some topic. These are now accessible from a menu item on your main user page, and they're pretty much separate photostreams. You can re-order their component images to taste. The Organize and Create page lets you do this by dragging thumbnails from the filmstrip view along the bottom of the window. Collections—formerly only available for Pro users—are groups of sets. These are accessible from the … menu on the right of the user page.

A Flickr Gallery lets you collect other people's photos and bring them together in a presentation including your commentary and large presentation on one deep scrolling page. These are limited to 18 photos, in an effort to mimic an actual curated museum show. Some lovely work has been done with these Flickr Galleries, such as Orange Cats, Trams, and Domes, just to point out a few out of thousands. A surprising number use B&W photos exclusively.

Tagging, Faces, and Maps You can apply tags and attach names to photos at the uploading step, but you can also add and edit tags on a photo's page, and Flickr remembers all your previous tags, so you can easily click on them to apply to a new photo. Photo programs like iPhoto and Lightroom also can transfer tags to Flickr that you've applied inside the applications. Once your photos are tagged, they'll be more easily searchable by Flickr visitors, and it will be much easier for you to find all those photos that, say, included your cat.

Each of your photo pages has a location field, the clicking of which lets you add it to your map if it hasn't been added automatically by your camera's built-in GPS (like that on the Canon EOS 6D). If you do want to add the photo to your map, you drag a pointer to the spot where you shot the photo. If the image already has location data embedded, as is usually the case for pictures taken with a smart phone, Flickr's map will propose the exact location you actually snapped the picture—try that in Facebook!

Though Flickr does let you assign People tags, the feature is more limited than what you can get in Picasa Web Albums, and even that in Facebook. For starters, there's no face recognition; you simply have to tell Flickr that the picture includes a person. Second, tags can only be of Flickr contacts. In Picasa, if your person isn't a contact in the service, you can simply use any name. You could just use a standard tag for this purpose. Another photo-info-adding option, which I usually find annoying but one that seems popular is to add a note—you draw a box on a part of the photo and when a viewer hovers over the photo, text you wrote appears.

Editing in AviaryFor a long time, Flickr integrated with the excellent Web-based Picnik photo editor/enhancer to allow you to make changes to your photos without leaving the site. Since Google bought and shut down Picasa, Flickr has shifted this functionality to another Web photo editor, Aviary. Accessible from any photo's Actions menu, Aviary's very basic interface offers autofixes, as well as a decent crop tool, an "orientation" tool that lets you level photos, and a decent selection of Instagram-like effects.

Aviary's red-eye and blemish correction work fairly well, but if you want a more powerful Web-based photo editor, check out Autodesk's Pixlr.com or Adobe's Photoshop Express either of which can access your Flickr photos. One advantage of Flickr's Aviary, though, is that it doesn't require the Adobe Flash plugin, as most other online photo editors do. This means it should work on the iPad's and other Flash-free browsers.

VideoFlickr is still primarily a still image site, but for years you've been able to upload a limited number of short, 90 second HD video clips. The intention was to use this capability not for YouTube-style videos, but for "long photos." Flickr's HD playback quality was better than that of most video sites but YouTube's HD capabilities has since erased that difference. With the recent Flickr update, your long photos can be longer--up to 3 minutes, and there's no limit on how many you can upload. With a terabyt to burn, that's a lot of minutes of 1080p HD video.

Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine’s lead analyst for software and Web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine’s coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies. Michael...

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